Laurence Roy Campton

• born October 27, 1916
• in Massena, Iowa

Father:

• James H. Campton
• born April 16, 1857
• in Pennsylvania

Mother:

• Anna R. Stratton
• born May 27, 1871
• in Titusville, Pennsylvania

Half-brothers and Sisters:

• Hugh
• Harry
• James
• Charles
• Maud
• Olive
• Pearl
• Ruth

Children:

• Benjamin L. (1/20/1938)
• Shirley Lorene (6/8/1940)
• Charles Otis (7/23/1947)

interviewed by Gwen Perschbacher

transcribed by Phyllis Smoak

This is May 10,1904 (2004), and I’m at the home of Laurence and Daisy Campton.

Gwen Perschbacher: And Laurence, would tell me your full name, when you were born and then kinda read down about your parents and so forth?

Laurence Campton: Well, my name is Laurence Roy Campton. I was born Oct. 27, 1916. I was born at Massena, Iowa. My father’s name was James H. Campton. And he was born in 18…. what did I say…. Well, in 1850, something. I don’t know where. My mother’s full name was Anna R. Stratton, and her place of birth was in Pennsylvania. You want the kids names?

Gwen Perschbacher: Uh huh.

Laurence Campton:, I had no full brothers and sisters. I had half brothers and sisters. I had Hugh and …

Gwen Perschbacher: James

Laurence Campton: James, Charles and Harry. And I had half sisters, Maude, Olive, Pearl and Ruth. They were all a lot older than I was. And we moved to Salida in June of 1949. We moved the first place at 402 East 4th and we moved into a duplex on 7th Street and then we spent a good many years at 924 “G” Street.
And the schools I attended: I went to Battery Township School in Missouri. Cabe County, Missouri. And I attended one year in Kansas, and then we moved to Oklahoma and I went to a country school at Center School. And then graduated from Tomhawa High School, and attended one year at UPS University Preparatory School, which is now Northern Oklahoma Junior College.

And my wife’s named Daisy. Her maiden name was Newman. And our children: we have Benny L. (Benjamin L.) He was born January the 20th, 1938. Shirley Lorene was born the 8th day of June, 1940. Charles Otis was born on the 7th day of, 23rd of July, 1947. We have 11 grandchildren.

GP: Can you tell me what your father did?

LC: He was a railroader. But he got struck by lightening and it left him crippled. And in those days, I don’t think the railroad even had insurance. Cause he never, I know, my folks, well we were dirt poor you might say. They sold a livery stable in Messena, Iowa and moved to Missouri, and bought… in fact I still own a little patch of ground out East of Nevada. But, my mother more or less supported us. She raised chickens and sold fryers and eggs and made yeast, homemade yeast and sold it. And, he took care of the garden, but he, he walked with a crutch and a cane. He’d start down the row, he’d have a chair at each end of the field, or the row. And he’d use his hoe for a cane, and then his crutch. And he’d hoe down and then sit down and rest and then go back to the other end. But we, we were really dirt poor. But my half- brothers and sisters, they took more care, better care of my mother than a lot of actual children. They were her step-children.

GP: Ohhh.

LC: They bought her a brand new Model T Ford, one time in Kansas City and hired a big black boy to drive it from Kansas City to Nevada, Missouri and took her into town and asked her if she could drive a car, and she drove it home.

GP: Huuuh.

LC: But see my Dad died when I was 8 years old. He was, was 60 when I was born.

GP: Were you the only child home at the time?

LC: I was the only child my mother ever had, yeah. The rest of them, the youngest one was Charles and he was 18 years older than I was.

GP: Oh. Where were you born? Were you born in a hospital or at home?

Daisy Campton: At home.

LC: I tell everybody I was born in a barn, because you went out of the back door of the house right into the livery stable.

GP: I see. Ok, well, tell me a little bit about your childhood, that, things that might stand out.

LC: Well, my childhood, I, I guess you’d say, I, we always had plenty to eat. We didn’t go hungry. And it was out in the country in Missouri, up until the time I was, well we went to Oklahoma I guess, when I was about 11 yeas old. Ten or 11 years old. My Mother had 3, 2 sisters living there and they wanted their baby sister closer to ‘em, so we moved to Oklahoma. But, I remember one year for Christmas, my half-sisters sent us a, sent me a great big Victrola. One of these, I had to stand on a box to even put a record on it. And there were I don’t know how many records. And I played that thing. And they sent me a model train one time. Just a little old round track, and you had to wind it up. But they was always sending me books. And I didn’t have a bad childhood. We didn’t have a lot of, .. one year for Christmas we had a, my Mother chopped down a big weed and decorated it for a Christmas tree. But we lived in a kind of a community in Missouri where everybody looked after everybody else. If somebody was going to go to town they’d always check with the other neighbors and see if they needed anything. But, I had, I didn’t have a lot of stuff … well I wouldn’t say a lot of fancy stuff, but I, I was able to attend school. I started to school one year. Two days after school started, I was, one of the big kids got me to do something. The teacher came up behind me, and hit the back of the bench with a stick. Scared me so bad, I didn’t go back to school until next year.

GP: Oh my goodness. Do you remember what year of school that was?

LC: Well, it would have probably been about 1922, ‘23, ‘21, cause I think I started when I was five years old. And in, in Missouri they had a funny system. You started out, one year, every year they taught the 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade. I don’t know, it’s probably not that way now. Then in the country schools the next year they’d teach the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 7th and then every other year they’d teach the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th and 8th. And I never did take the 7th grade. I took the 8th grade twice. I took it once in Oklahoma and once in Missouri…. er, er, Missouri, yeah. But, if you started right, you was alright, and I was goin’ right. And then the year I went to school in Kansas, well that fouled me up. So, I, and then I took the 1st and 2nd grade the same year, cause I was the only one in the 1st grade, and I guess I’d been home schooled pretty well cause the teacher had me in the 1st grade for about, I don’t know, a couple of months and moved me up to the 2nd grade. So, I must have been a, a boy wonder, or something.

GP: Well, when, when did you meet your wife?

LC: Well,…. they was havin’ a basketball tournament. I was going to college in Oklahoma, it, what was the name of the place……

DC: Ames, Oklahoma.

LC: Ames, Oklahoma, they was havin’ a basketball tournament and the Tomhawa High School team was playin’ there. And I guy that I’d got acquainted with, he’d graduated the same year I did, he was going with a girl from school and he said, “Let’s go to the basketball game.” He had a brother that was playing on the team. All right. So I was goin’ with a little neighbor girl out in the country and I asked her if she’d like to go to the basketball game and her mother wouldn’t let her go. So this guy told me, he said, well you know we got a, my bud’s got a, er my girlfriend’s got a friend that lives at Oteen, which isn’t too far from Ames, and she wants a ride home for Christmas Holiday. OK. That was it.

GP: And that was Daisy, huh?

LC: Yep. And then she chased me so, so hard that she, I finally caught her.

GP: And what year were you married?

LC: 1937.

GP: What were you doing at the time?

LC: Farmin.

DC: You was in school, had a paper route.

LC: No. I was in school. I was goin’ to college. I had a paper route in the mornings, but I was going to college. And she was still in High School. But we managed to survive.

GP: So what brought you to Colorado?

LC: Foster Lumber Company. It was a chain outfit. And I went to work for ‘em I had a wheat crop one year, and I went to work for ‘em more or less to have some income. And then they thought well, they had a yard in Oklahoma, well they had four yards in Oklahoma at that time. And they, I got interested in it, so they transferred me to Norton, Kansas. From Norton, I went to Herndon, Kansas, then from Herndon to Stratton and then Stratton to here. And I’ve been here ever since.

GP: And, tell me a little bit about Foster Lumber, 'cause most people that live here now would never have heard of Foster Lumber.

LC: Well, it was a big outfit. It was a family owned affair. And a fellow by the name of Benjamin B. Foster hauled his first load of lumber with ox teams from St. Louis, Missouri to Rexford, Kansas, right out there in the middle of the prairie. And he unloaded his lumber and said “This is it,” and that’s where he started his first lumber yard. And then as they got, they got yards in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and Oklahoma for awhile. But they, Rexford, Kansas, I don’t know whether it’s probably in there now, cause I don’t think the lumber company’s even in existence anymore. They had what they called Rexford Farms. Mr. Ben, Mr. Foster started raising blooded cattle and registered horses on his Rexford farm. But, they had us all back to Kansas City, Missouri for, what was it, the 75th Anniversary. They took all the upper managers, went and chartered, hired a train on the Rock Island Railroad. Had the whole train to ourself. But it wasn’t, it wasn’t a fast train, cause it stopped and picked up milk cans at every crossing. They had a quite a big celebration that year. But, they had a, they came farther west. They had, they finally had, they had the lumber yard here, and one at Gunnison and one at Montrose and then later on they got one up at Glenwood Springs. And then they even had one in Boulder. But then, it was started as a small town lumber yard. That’s what Benjamin Foster, you found ‘em in all those little towns in Kansas. Herndon, Kansas, in fact they weren’t even county seat towns. Just a little wide spot. Herndon I don’t suppose had 800 people, and still had a lumber yard.

GP: So what did you do then after you were at Foster Lumber? Did, was that what, did you leave when it left, or were you……..

LC: No, I left before. Oh, I sold cars, and had a Coke route, an, what else did I do? Worked for the county most of the time. Went to work for the County Road Department, that’s where I was…..

DC: You were Chamber Manager for awhile.

LC: Oh yeah, I was Chamber Manager for a couple of years. That didn’t pan out too good, I wasn’t, I couldn’t lie good enough. Same way with sellin’ cars. But, you know, I went to work for the County. Worked for them pert near 20 years, on the road department. I’m still workin’ for the County.

GP: And, tell us what you're doing now.

LC: I’m the Veterans Service Officer. I take care of veteran’s affairs, help ‘em get compensation if they’ve got any comin’, get ‘em to the hospital. We have two vans we use. And were goin’, two fellows are going back to Cinncinatti Ohio, day after tomorrow to get another new van. The County has done real good so they, the Commissioners have bought two vans for us. The first one cost $8800 dollars. That’s a brand new one.
The second one was $10,000 and this year it was $11,000, but that’s pretty cheap for a new van, at that. And we put a lot of, we put 60,000 miles on them last year, on the two we had.

GP: You might tell a little bit about being in the service, where you were and how that affected you and Daisy’s life.

LC: Well, it sure raised heck with our living arrangements. I, well I was in Europe. Participated in several of the battles over there, and got captured during the Battle of the Bulge. In fact I did make a, I made a remark to my youngest son, I said “I’d like to go to that WWII Memorial Dedication,” and he said, “Well let’s go.” Then I changed my mind, I don’t, I think I’d be a physical wreck if I had to ride, what, two or three days to get to Washington, DC. But, we managed to survive on that too.

DC: Benny and Shirley were both in school.

LC: Yeah, and Chuck was born after we, well we was, we was living in Stratton when he was born wasn’t we?

GP: And when, when did you get out of the Service then?

LC: October the 31st, 1945. The war was over. I had 127 points and they was kickin’ ‘em out with 55 points at that time. Well, when I got out of Prison Camp I only weighted 92 pounds and I wasn’t in too good a shape, so they kept me around until they got me built up a little better.

GP: How did you feel you were treated as a prisoner?

LC: You shouldn’t ask me that.

GP: Oh.

LC: When I first was captured, we had a bunch of SS troopers that had been, well… a lot of them had only one hand or or one arm, one leg off and they delegated them from front line troops to prison camp. And they were, they were absolutely mean, they, they just loved to hurt you. And then, when they, down towards the tail end they brought in a bunch of the old timers, the old WWI veterans and they were a little better, cause they knew what it was. But, I was, they had a prisoner of war camp, a German prisoner of war camp at Tomhawa, Oklahoma when I got home. I had a 60-day convalescent furlough and I got to visitin’ with the guys and they had a alfalfa mill right across the road from where she was livin’. And I’d go over and visit with the guards that bring those guys in that was workin at the alfalfa mill. And I’d go out, I started goin’ out to the PX at the prison camp, cause you could buy a malted milks for a nickel and anything else. And in those days you wore your uniform, if you was in the military. And I was sittin’ there one day talking to a couple of the guards that I’d gotten acquainted with, and these three civilians came in with the Camp Commander. And the Commander and sat down right behind us. And the Camp Commander asked one of ‘em, says, “How does the treatment and the food that we give our prisoners here, compare to what our boys got in Germany?” And this guy said, “It’s about the same, the foods a little bit better." And I just turned around and I says “You’re a blankety-blank liar.” Well the Camp Commander said, “Soldier you’d better apologize or I’ll have you in the stockaid.”
And I said “I don’t care, he’s a liar. I just got out of one of their dad-gum camps.” The food wasn’t, well there just wasn’t any. Medical care was the best we could get and for, we had a British Major who was a surgeon and an American Medical Doctor who was a Captain, that, course, they gave their word that they would not try to escape if they just let ‘em run the camp and take care of the guys. But this, I spent, well, the last two weeks I was there I was in the, what they called the hospital. It was just a building that they moved you out of the double bunks on the side into the center, the single bunks and you knew was on the road out, because that’s where they put the guys that was dyin’, When I was liberated, I really wasn’t, I didn’t know what was goin’ on, but I do remember there was a nurse came up with some of the doctors, and they, they was goin’ down the line, they had us lying out on the side of the rail, the railroad track, on the embankment. I was on a stretcher, I think. And, the Doctor, I heard him say, “Let this guy go,” he said, “he’s too far gone. We'll take the others.” And I heard this nurse say, “No, he is not," she said, "he’s going to be fine.” And they was talkin’ about me. But I laid in the hospital for two months before they even started to send me home. I think when I got home I weighed, what, 127 pounds, somethin’ like that. I sent her home a picture of me that I took in Paris, one of these little, where you used to walk into a little booth and put a quarter in the slot and get a picture. Her sister said, “you’d better not carry that, that, that’s not him”.

GP: Hmmm. Well were, was part of the food problem because everybody in Germany didn’t have food, or was it just because you were a prisoner or do you know?

LC: Well, the German soldiers, they didn’t have good food, but they had, what they had was nourishing. They had a stew they carried a, their mess kit was a round bucket and they’d carry that stew in it. And it was a, it had meat and every, vegetable and everything. What we would get for breakfast, they called it coffee, all it was they burned barley and poured hot water over it. And then for lunch, sometimes you’d get a bowl of soup and once in awhile there’d be a little piece of horse meat floatin’ around in it. And then for supper that night, you’d get one slice of bread, sometimes they’d put a, all it was was lard, they called it margarine. That’s all we ate. When we started us out of there in these box cars, they, they put one loaf of bread in for, well there’s enough for about every 10 men, one loaf of bread. Course, the thing that helped, the bread was heavy. In fact they made it out of sawdust.

GP: You're kidding.

LC: No. They used sawdust in their bread. That’s enough of that.

GP: Ok, well, tell me about after you were at Foster Lumber and is there any incidents of any of the places you worked that would be of interest to the people here that might be listening to this?

LC: Well, I don’t, there’s a lot of people don’t even know we had a Coke plant here at one time. It’s over there where the city garage is now, I guess you call it. Chuck Furphy. I worked for him for a couple of years. We bottled Coke. He paid us $20.00 a week to work in the plant and then we run a route too.

GP: And that was Chuck Furphy?

LC: Chuck Furphy. You know Chuck Furphy.

GP: Uh, huh.

LC: And, the, I sold cars for Clyde Wilkonson for a couple of years. No, I guess I didn’t sell that long.

GP: And where was his place of business?

LC: Right there where High Country Bank is, downtown, right on the corner.

GP: Mmmm, ok.

LC: You know Clyde Wilkonson, the Ford Garage was there, and behind it was Costello’s bar and tavern.

GP: That was on West 2nd and “G”.

LC: Mmm huh. You remember. But I really enjoyed the time I put in working for the County. I like to be outdoors. And Clarence Fowler was our road foreman and Joe Reno was road forman for this district. And Joe Reno’s pet project was Ute Trail and Clarence Fowler’s pet project was Chalk Creek. Course that’s when all they had was a railroad bed up there. And anytime we didn’t have somethin’ real pressing to do, we’d go up and work on the Chalk Creek railroad bed. But we had a nice crew to work with and enjoyed it. Just like a picnic for me. But…….

GP: You belong, I know that you were instrumental in starting FIBArk, could you, I think, weren’t you, or….?

LC: No, I didn’t help, I didn’t get it started. I, In fact the first two or three years it was here, I didn’t even, I’d go fishing that day. And then I got interested in it and, and started running in it.

GP: When you say running in it, you mean boating in it.

LC: Boating in it. Racing in it. And I enjoyed that too, because it was somthin’, well, I, I guess I done pretty good at it. I run eight years, and took third 4 times and won it once. But…….

GP: What year did you win it, do you remember?

LC: 1959. That’s a long time ago.

GP: That was.

LC: But then,….I got several awards since I been here that I’m real proud of. I was Rocky Mountain, Western Division, Elk Of The Year for the Elks. And I got the award for Service Officer of the year in, what, 1999, it’s down at the office.

GP: That’s for the veterans?

LC: Veteran Service Officer of the Year. And I’ve got several awards from DAV for working with the volunteers. In fact I got a wristwatch from the Elks a couple years ago for volunteer services. But, I like to think that I’ve made a difference. Cause, I, this, this job I’ve got now is just primarily to help people and mainly veterans, well it is veterans. But, and I enjoy doin’ it.

GP: Well, tell me a little bit about the organizations, how they’ve changed through the years that you belong to. Can you tell me any, or have they changed that much?

LC: Well, it used to be when you started through the chairs at the Elks, you’d plan on seven years before you got to be Exalted Ruler, which is the highest office. And now, some of these guys are Exalted Ruler after they’ve been in the chairs maybe two years. We year we had one guy started one year and was Exalted Ruler the next year. They just don’t seem to take interest in it. The Masonic Lodge is a little different. They still have their lines over there, although it’s gettin’ hard to get officers I think. And, the veterans groups; the American Legion they've had the same Commander now for several years cause they can’t get anybody to take it; the VFW’s getting’ in the same situation and the DAV, we have one, we have four meetings a year, we meet quarterly, if we think of it. But Gene Brodus and I keep that going, because that’s where we get these vans is through the Disabled American Veterans. But, like I say, I, I belong to a lot of organizations, but I really enjoy ‘em all. I don’t attend too much any, I used to never miss an Elks meeting, but too hard for me to get up and down stairs anymore. And I don’t attend Blue Lodge as often as I should, we go to Shrine parties once in awhile. And, but, I’ll tell you, all organizations I think, are in the same situation, it’s gettin’ hard to get people to, that want to work.

GP: So your in the Shriners too?

LC: Oh yeah.

GP: So can you tell me anything about the Shriners?

LC: Well, I and George Koenig are the only two charter members left alive of the original group that formed the Monarch Shrine Club. And they, I joined the, went through the Elk's rite and of course somebody asked me if I wanted to join the Shrine. And I said, "Why should I join somethin’, go to Pueblo and join it if I’m never going to attend a meeting?" "Well, would you join if we come up to Salida and put the work on?" "Yeah". So there was about, I think there was 22 or 24 of us joined at the same time. But I and George Koenig are the only two that’s left, and that’s been over 50 years ago. Tom Corlett was one, and Verl Williams, Chuck Diver, he was one. But I and George Koenig are the only two surviving members of the charter Shrine. But the Shriner’s is a different organization. They cater, they’re primarily for crippled children, and they support this…..

GP: And burned.

LC: Huh?

GP: And burned.

LC: Well yeah, burned. They support the Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. And all these fund raisers they have, that money goes to the, to the crippled children's. But, they’re, they’re a, they’re a worthwhile organization, and all these people that complain about the circus, about abusing the animals. The circus hasn’t been making ‘em too much money. They had this deal just this last weekend, Saturday and Sunday, a sport show. I didn’t go cause it’s just hard for me to get around, and I run out of wind. But if people would support the Shrine more, it, it’s a worthwhile organization. It’s a fun organization too, they like to party. But they still do a lot of good.

GP: Tell me a little bit about the social life in Salida, how it’s changed. Or has it changed?

LC: Well, I don’t know whether it’s changed or not. It’s maybe a little different. When we first moved here, back in Stratton we had what we called the Stratton…. What’d we call ‘em? That little club we had, just four couples wasn’t it? No, it was more than four couples. Yeah. And we had a little party. We’d meet once a month, have a covered dish dinner, play cards and visit. And as soon as she hit town, she said “I’m going to start another organization like that here.” And she started it. And I can even name you the ones that was in it originally. Fred and Laura Nylander.

GP: Now what’s the last name?

LC: Nylander.

GP: Nylander.

LC: He worked for Public Service. Ivan and Reba Porter. George and Wilmoth Everett.

GP: Everett?

LC: Uh huh. Jim and Fran Limberis. With an s.

DC: Mort and Dorothy.

GP: Humm?

DC: Mort and Dorothy.

LC: Oh, Mort and Dorothy Kerndt. How many have I got there?

GP: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 couples.

LC: There must have been somebody else.

GP: There would be six couples all together.

DC: Well, Gladys and George Armstrong in the beginning.

LC: But they didn’t last long.

DC: No, well, he passed away.

GP: Yeah, Gladys and George Armstrong too. And the funny part of it was, they were all, all the men were Masons but one, Ivan Porter, and he had already petitioned the Lodge. Just, just as an accident.

LC: Hummm. So basically you got together for dinner and…….

GP: That’s it, a covered dish dinner, and played cards and just had a good time. It was a real congenial bunch. I remember the first time we had it, you, they give you a little slip of paper, and usually it would say on there “YOU’RE IT.” And you had to wash the dishes.

DC: Men, it was the men.

LC: The men had to wash the dishes. And the first night we ever had it, we was livin’ on “G” street, George Everett, George Everett had to do the dishes. And that just, he, he never let us forget that either.

GP: But, it was, it was a real congenial bunch. We had a lot of fun. Then for quite awhile, every Spring we’d go up to Cripple Creek to the Melodrama, the same bunch. And, a lot of those are gone now too.

DC: Most of ‘em.

GP: Mmm huh. Did did TV change some of that social life you think, in Salida?

LC: I think it has. I think TV has practically ruined a lot of organizations. You take the Ma, er Blue, er the Elks; on our initiation night they’d have to put extra seats along there just for the people to set in. Now you’re darn lucky to get 20 people even when you initiate candidates. But, but I think TV and outside entertainment. And then, in those days the only place they had a New Year’s Eve Party was at the Elk’s Lodge. And you had to belong to the Elks to go to it.

GP: Mmm huh. I remember that. And those were some pretty good parties.

LC: Yep.

GP: Well, is there anything else that you can think of that, stories you’d like to tell, er….

LC: Well, I can’t think of anything.

GP: Where was the Chamber of Commerce when you were the Manager? Where was it located?

LC: Where? Right there behind the Senior Center, in that little building there. Right where there where the fish pond was.

GP: Oh, on East 3rd.

LC: Yeah.

GP: Can you tell me something about the fish pond. That’s something I haven’t heard anybody mention.

LC: Well. And that was also a weather reporting station. We took the temperature, and the high and the low and the moisture, measured the rain fall. Well, anybody, the old timers remember the fish pond. That big old concrete tank. But, one thing that happened when I was manager of the Chamber was, we got a phone call one day. And it was somebody from the Police Department said, we just arrested three kids that had a big fish they caught out of the fish pond. Some girl across, had been standin’ over there, across the street watchin’ ‘em. This one boy set up on the railing, and pretty quick she seen him do like that, and he jumped up and run over and got in the car, and she could see this fish's tail hangin’ out his pant leg. So she just called the police and they caught him here below town. And I went to the hearing they had on him. And I don’t remember who the judge was at the time. Anyway, he told, er the Game Warden was present, I remember he told the Judge, he said “Judge I want you to remember one thing. If you say 30 days in jail, that’s it,” he said, "there’s no parole on a game violation.” So, I think they fined those guys $500 apiece. So that was a pretty expensive fish, and they didn’t get to keep the fish. They used to have some big fish in there, you know. But the well was there. They had to have a well to pump well water into it because the chlorine water would kill the fish. And the wells probably, well it’s someplace under the Senior Center.

GP: It was quit an attraction as I remember, too.

LC: Oh yeah, all those big fish swimmin’ around in there. And a couple of year they put a couple of big, these big albinos in there and they was a real attraction. But, I guess the Senior Center is more of an attraction then the fish were.

GP: Well, anything else that you can think of about; can you think of any characters around town that…..

LC: Characters? The only character that I can think of is Fred Paquette, and he’s dead now. Fred and I, we used to get into all kinds of troubles. We, remember six or seven, not, not just, not too long ago we had a little earthquake here. It shook the place out here. But several years ago they had a pretty good one over at Cripple Cr…over at,… oh, over on the Rio Grande…… Creede. So Fred and I we decided we’d have a little excitement. So we got ahold of Jake Jacques and told him what we was going to do and he said, “When you get ready to do it, you let me know so I can be out of town.. And we started a rumor; “Has anybody been up to the crater?” In those days you didn’t, you had to walk to the crater from the backside. Now I guess you can drive clear up on the rim.

GP: Now, I’m going to backtrack a little bit. Jacques was the Forest Ranger here right? And the crater is up behind Tenderfoot?

LC: Yeah.

GP: Ok. Go ahead.

LC: We asked ‘em, ”Look, it’s got cracks in the bottom of it, there’s steam comin’ out of it.” And we sent off and got 4 or 5 of these big 5” arial bombs and we had 5 gallons of crude oil and had some sulphur and couple of old tires and some old oil filters. We was going to go up there an set off some of those arial bombs and build a big ‘ol smudge down in the bottom of the crater. We got to thinking, you know, there’s only one way in and one way out and in spite of heck and high waters everybody, instead of running for the hills, the other side they're going to come up to see what’s happenin and they’re goin’ to catch us comin’ out. We used to have a lot of fun. One day when I had the service station over here, he had a funny noise in one of his free wheeling hub. And I said, well let’s, where does it do it most. He said, well when I hit the railroad track on 7th street. That’s when the narrow guage was still here. And I said, “Let’s take it up and drive it across”. “Alright”. So I’m laying across the hood trying to figure out which wheel it is. And Harry Cable and Harold Thonoff, Chief of Police and the Sherrif was coming down the street. And Cable says “What in the heck are those two guys doing now?” And Thonoff said “I don’t know, but we’re not going to stop to find out.” We used to, we both had cabins up in the Turrett district and used to spend a lot of time up there. Had some good ‘ol parties up there. Fred’s no longer with us. But, all-in-all I’ve enjoyed my life here in the mountains. My only regret was I didn’t come here when I was two years old. Course it’s like Fred said one day, if we’d known one another when we was sixteen, we’d have both been dead before we was twenty. And he was probably right.

GP: If you’d have been together huh? Well, I’ve really enjoyed this, and I, I don’t know about, oh, let’s see if I think of anything else. Oh, can you tell me anything about the swimming pool?

LC: No, I don’t know much about the swimming pool. I do know, of course this happened not too many years ago, when Mack Bevington wanted to buy it. And the fathers, the city fathers didn’t want to sell it. And if they'd have sold it to him, it would’ve been, they’d probably had a nice big motel and convention center there, cause Mack Bevington had big ideas for it.

GP: Didn’t that go to a vote of the people?

DC: Uh huh. And they voted it down.

LC: Yeah, I think they took that vote to the people, and they sort of voted it down.

GP: You remember when that was?

LC: I remember when we first came here they had those old cabins all around there that came down from Camp Hale.

GP: Is that where they came from?

LC: Yeah, they were army cambins.

GP: I didn’t realize that.

LC: I don’t even know what, what they ever done with ‘em. I guess they just tore ‘em down, I don’t think they moved ‘em out. And you know, when they just rebuilt the swimmin’ pool recently, down there at Howard they took those rafters down there to make them a garage. Well, they’ve got ‘em a nice new building, but they didn’t use those rafters. And the rafters are gone some place. That cost ‘em something too, to get ‘em hauled down there and saved money for the city when they was takin‘ ‘em off.

GP: Well, is there anything else you can think about, any big events that you can remember in Salida, or storms, besides the earthquake.

LC: The big storm about 3 years ago. Fifty-two inches right out here in my front yard. And here a good many years ago, we had a blizzard on the first day of May. And I mean that was a doozy too. It’s been several years ago, because of Mort Sparks was in the grocery store and Mrs. Parker Wellington come in to get a bunch of groceries for their, well they probably had a lot of tourists. And she was afraid to go home in that snow storm. So Mort called me and he led and I followed in our jeeps and we got her home alright.

GP: Well that’s something you were involved in, jeep tours.

LC: Jeep, jeep tours, jeep patrol. I was one of the charter members of the jeep patrol.

GP: And what did they do?

LC: Search and rescue.

GP: Mmm huh. That kind of the beginning of search and rescue?

LC: Well, yeah, that’s when search and rescue got started. And jeep tours; well a guy by the name of Max Sauter was manager of the Chamber and he came up with this idea of a jeep tour in August, or July I guess it was. And I don’t know how many people, we had, had a whole bunch of people, charged ‘em $1.50 apiece. And we would have broke even, cause all we had for lunch, we had, we gave, cut everybody a forked stick and gave ‘em a couple of wieners and a big ‘ol spoonful of pork and beans and made ‘em two or three big ‘ol pots of coffee. And we, we wouldn’t went in the hole if Max Sauter hadn’t a made a long distance phone call from Pitkin. That made us go in the hole. And then we started havin two a year and then several years we had three. And then when this jeep tour outfit took over well, that ruined it, because they was chargin so dadgum much just to……. But my grandson up in Frisco bought another rafting company awhile back. This Timberwolf outfit down here below town? And my son, his Dad told me yesterday he said he’s got a, got one they call “Saddle Paddle”. You can ride a horse a half a day and then paddle for a half a day. He’s startin’ something new. But, that rafting business has got to be a big, big deal.

GP: Well, if there’s nothing else, I really thank you for your time and interest in doing this for us.

LC: Ok.

GP: And thank you too Daisy.

LC: Maybe she’s can add somethin’ to it.

GP: Would you like to add something to it Daisy? Really.

DC: No,sounds real good to me. Mm uh.

GP: Ok, you’re sure welcome to.

DC: I know, thank you.

GP: You might tell me about family life how it’s changed.

DC: Well, when the nest is empty, it definitely changes you know.

LC: Get her that poem. My son gave us a poem yesterday. And it sure fits us. Well, we keep the hummingbirds fed. We’ve got a cat that had some kittens out here someplace and keep her fed.

GP: Oh, it’s a poem.

DC: Mmm huh, a poem.

POEM: (Read by Gwen Persbacher)
It isn’t that we talk so much,
Sometimes the evening through,
You do not say a word to me,
I do not talk to you.
You sit beside your reading lamp,
I like my easy chair.
And it is joy enough for me to know that you are there.

It isn’t that we go so much.
Sometimes we like to roam
And visit where are children live,
But best of all is home.
I sew a bit, or play for you
Some song we like to share
And it is joy enough for me to know that you are there.

It isn’t that you tell to me
The things I’ve come to know.
It goes too deep for words to tell
How love through years can grow.
You only have to touch my hand
To know how much I care.
But it is joy enough for me to know that you are there.

GP: Well, that’s great.

DC: It was cute.

GP: How many years have you been married?

LC: Sixty-seven.

DC: Sixty-seven

GP: Sixty-seven years. Wow.

DC: In March.

GP: Anything else?

DC: Nope

GP: Well, thank you both. I really appreciate it.

DC: Thank you.